Lichgates: Book One of the Grimoire Saga (an Epic Fantasy Adventure) (52 page)

“Why do you fight?”
Adele had asked him once during a match, moments before she cracked the hilt of her sword over his head and sent him to his knees. He hadn’t been paying attention to her like he should have; he’d been focused on the question. The first Vagabond had asked him that, too, when a possessed Kara had denied him the freedom he’d dreamed of for over a decade.

He’d always fought out of instinct and the fear of helplessness, but in his training with Adele, he’d thought of Kara: how the pulse in her neck had raced beneath his hands; how the life in her eyes flickered as she’d tried to choke out his name. The disgraceful rage that fueled him smoldered in his chest again, but he quelled it. It was easier to do, now.

“If you focus on your reason for enduring the pain, you will control the rage,”
Adele had often said as they trained.

The muse would beat him within an inch of his life, always gritting her teeth in annoyance when he let the daru consume him. Her tests were attempts to see how long he could withstand the pain and still control himself. He’d never passed. He hadn’t finished training.

Kara was his escape from the daru. He would remember how clear her gray eyes were or how her hair always became honey-colored in the sun, and that would clear his mind. When she laughed, her face lit up and glowed with the sound. When she was petrified, she blinked a lot.

To the Bloods, she was a weapon, expendable when weighed against the lives of their people. But to him, her life and freedom meant more than even he could admit.

“Braeden?”

He shoved the talisman back into his pocket in what he hoped was a subtle movement and spun around, grinning when he saw her standing in the doorway. Her hair was a mess, frizzled and lopsided, and she patted it in a failed attempt to tame the tangles. She rubbed her eyes and adjusted the satchel on her shoulder before settling in beside him and looking out over the village.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he agreed, but he didn’t look at the village until after he spoke. She rubbed the now-healed scars on her bicep with an absent look over to the mansion.

“Do you think that’s the Vagabond’s old house?”

“Probably. How are you feeling?”

“Better. I guess you healed me?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks. And thank you for finding me. If you hadn’t...” She trailed off and examined her hands, no doubt as a distraction from thinking of what exactly would have happened to her.

“Someone has to keep you out of trouble.”

She laughed. He reached out and lifted her chin with a playful twist of his hand, but once he touched her, he didn’t want to let go.

He’d meant to continue talking, to keep her laughing, but he forgot what he was going to say. Instead, he reached a thumb to her cheek without pausing to think about whether or not she would push him away.

She didn’t.

The corner of her lip twitched into a smile, so he leaned forward and pulled her gently closer. He searched her face, looking for any hint that she didn’t want him to do what he was about to do, but she closed the final inch between them and brushed his lips with hers. He held the back of her head and closed his eyes, grateful that she didn’t flinch at his touch anymore.

She pulled away too soon with an unhappy breath and glared at the courtyard, avoiding his gaze. He bit his cheek and looked away, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong.

“I’m confused,” he admitted.

She grinned. “No, I liked it. It’s just that we can never happen. I mean, we’re not even the same species.”

“I never realized you were such a purist.”

“Not what I meant.” She laughed, but the smile quickly faded. “Braeden, we’re going to get each other killed.”

He sighed with mock relief. “If that is your biggest worry, then I can live with it. Some things are worth dying for.”

“C’mon, Braeden, be serious,” she chided, her voice quiet. She scooted closer to him and leaned her head on his shoulder, but he lifted her chin so that she had to look him in the eye.

“I wasn’t joking.”

A thought flickered across his mind and he paused before he continued, fearful of the answer.

“Are you still afraid of me, Kara?”

“No.”

He took a deep breath and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

“I forgive you for the incident with Carden,” she said. “And I know why you left to train with Adele. I’m not angry, but it would be hard for me to live with myself if I got you killed. That’s what happens to the people vagabonds care about. They die.”

“You don’t have to worry about me.” He winked, weaseling a smile out of her.

She leaned into him, and in that moment, his mind went blank. The buzzing in his ear disappeared, and he was, for just one second, happy.

But that’s the trouble with moments—they end. Kara shifted her weight and when she did, the buzzing returned in his ear with a vengeance. He became suddenly aware of the talisman in his pocket, and the amulet’s smoky image of the Stele churned in his mind. Guilt twisted in his chest.

Kara’s smile faded as she looked him over. “What’s wrong?”

“I...” He trailed off as the last of her grin disappeared.

He wanted to tell her about the amulet, about the talisman, about the buzzing in his ear and the shame, but the words died on his lips. She looked him over and frowned, but he forced a smile and tucked a loose lock of her hair behind her ear.

“We should explore.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she stood after a moment and seemed to accept that he wasn’t going to tell her the truth.

“We can start with the mansion, I guess,” she suggested, pursing her lips.

“That works for me.”

He pushed himself to his feet and hurried down the stairs ahead of her, walking so quickly that he crossed the courtyard and walked up the steps of the mansion after just a few minutes. The wooden steps bent beneath his feet, but withstood his weight as he moved toward the door beside the still-swinging rocking chair.

He opened the door, but let Kara through first. He peered over her head as she hovered at the threshold, examining the mansion’s foyer. The first floor hallway had only two doors: the first, on the left of the stairwell, had been left open to reveal the long wooden table and plush chairs of a war room; the second, to their right, was closed and had no handle. Its only décor was a small indent of the clover symbol in the center panel. A broad staircase consumed most of the entry and led up to an open hallway on the second floor, where a set of mahogany double-doors with thin silver handles sat at the top of the stairs.

Braeden walked into the mansion and stopped at the foot of the staircase, looking up to the second floor and its dark wooden doors that seemed to stretch farther away the longer he looked at them. The pit of his stomach tightened as he debated what could be behind them, certain that she would choose that room first, but Kara walked to the door without a knob and ran a finger over the small Grimoire symbol etched into its wood.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “The first room you choose in a house full of doors is the one without a handle?”

She laughed. “C’mon. What else were you expecting? If I always took the easy way, I wouldn’t be here.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

THE GRIMOIRES

Kara glanced once over her shoulder at Braeden, who grinned and crossed his arms as he waited for her to open the only door in the Vagabond’s mansion without a doorknob. She lifted the chain from around her neck and waited for her heart to pang as she remembered the locket was gone, but nothing happened: no fear, no sadness, no memories.

She slipped the Grimoire clover into the wood’s engraved indent. The door melted around itself at her touch, and the weight of her pendant returned to the chain around her neck. Light burned from the hallway behind them, illuminating the small, empty room on the other side of the door. Its walls were bare, and a simple gray tapestry hung across the way, billowing in a weak draft that followed them as they walked in. She crossed to the tapestry and pulled it back, gasping when she caught sight of the next room. Braeden chuckled and shook his head in disbelief.

Beyond the plain, empty room was another, octagonal chamber filled with gold, chests, and weapons.

A window in the angled ceiling allowed beams of sunshine into the chamber. The light glinted off of the gold and steel and other glittering treasures in the room. Piles of gold bars, nuggets, and coins lay about the many corners. Chests filled with strings of pearls and crowns lay open, spewing their contents onto the floor nearby. There were even a few trunks of clothes. A black silk dress had been laid across one of these chests, as if someone had chosen the gown but left it behind on accident.

“This is incredible,” Braeden said. “If you still want to go to the Gala, this room will make choosing the Bloods’ gifts easier.”

“Oh I’m going,” she said. “We’ve gone through too much to miss it. I’m just not sure whether or not they’ve been good enough for presents.”

He grinned and sat down beside a chest filled with swords, daggers, and other assorted sharp things, frowning as he rifled through it.

“This isn’t how you store weapons,” he grumbled. “It’s disgraceful.”

“They’re yours to fix as you please, then.”

He smiled and turned back to the piles of steel, biting his cheek as he focused. She glanced around the treasure chamber, but the glittering jewels just reminded her of the crystals on the cursed tiara in Hillside. She took a deep breath and headed back toward the mansion’s foyer.

The stairwell drew her toward it once she walked through the treasure chamber’s door-less frame and back out into the hallway. She took the carpeted stairs one at a time until she reached the vast double doors and paused, one hand resting on each of the handles. The latches clicked under her thumbs and she pushed them open to reveal a library.

It reminded her of the library where she’d found the Grimoire, really: shelves filled with thick, leather-bound books lined every wall, but at least there were doors this time. A wide oak desk with clawed bronze feet stood beneath a tall window, and a small shelf just high enough to reach the windowsill rested against the wall behind the desk. It was filled with dozens of crimson tomes that looked identical to each other—and to her Grimoire.

She pulled one from the shelf, horror inching into her chest as she examined a small clover pendant embedded in the fused, silver vines that wrapped around the book. These Grimoires were flawless and new, and unlike hers, they had no rips or tears in them.

“There are a hundred grimoires on that bookshelf,” the Vagabond said in her ear.

He stood suddenly beside her, his body once again nothing but white and gray wisps of light.

She stepped back. “I don’t—I—is this the unfinished project you were talking about, Vagabond?”

“One of them. Each of these grimoires is as powerful as yours, with a few exceptions. This is what you came for, Kara. I wanted to give my vagabonds the same power I carried, but I was too late. If you’re to succeed, you must spread the Grimoire’s knowledge and its power, as I was about to.”

“Are you kidding?” she demanded.

He didn’t answer.

“Making other vagabonds is what made the Bloods fear you! It’s the reason every vagabond was murdered! You didn’t learn anything!”

“The night I watched my people die was the worst of my life, Kara,” he said, obviously hurt. “Of course I learned from it. But everything worth doing comes with a risk. They knew that they might die, but chose to stay by me anyway.

“That is what your friends Twin and Braeden both lack: the freedom of choice. You can’t trust a yakona with the blood loyalty. Whether or not they want to help you, they can be controlled. They can betray you. You will fail if you don’t have free yakona whom you can trust.”

”I won’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Maybe you can’t see it, but creating vagabonds is what made you a threat. The drenowith admitted it. Your own memory proved it. So yeah, if I create more vagabonds, I’ll definitely be killed.”

“But you must create free vagabonds. You’re already a threat! If your allies aren’t free, the Bloods will find a way to control you.”

“I don’t have to do anything. Obeying you even though I think it’s wrong will make me no better than a yakona with a blood loyalty!”

The Vagabond snapped his head back, and for several minutes, the room was silent.

“I’ve seen far more than you have,” he finally said. “I should hope that you would employ the lessons I’ve gathered from my failures. You’ll take your own road, Kara, but please know that I only want you to succeed.”

“I know. But even for all the pages in the Grimoire, you haven’t seen everything. I think you’re wrong about this.”

“Then I’ll wait to see where this takes you,” he said with a sigh. “I know you rely on Braeden, but he is just as susceptible to his blood loyalty as any other yakona. You’ve already seen that. He will not always protect you, even when he wants to. If you don’t get him killed, he will likely kill you.”

“That won’t happen.” She shook her head, as if doing so hard enough would make it true.